Modern Assembly or Insert Name Here!

Those of you who follow my work with the Gamer Assembly know I’ve been working on a rules module for D&D 4e that I’ve been calling Modern Assembly. I took a bit of a break on things to play with the Marvel RPG and get the Midgard Bestiary Kickstarter rolling, but now I’m back!

Modern Assembly is being designed with a few goals in mind:

1. Keep as much of the currently available 4e content as straight-out-of-the-box useful as possible.
2. Only create what needs to be created, with a focus on mechanics that are modular and/or easily incorporated.
3. Support as many variations of modern fantasy as possible.
4. Keep it fun and action focused.

You can read the full introduction, but that’s the core idea.

I then created a system for handling Wealth, and priced out some Mundane Items and Modern Weapons.

Themes are used to add Modern Ideas to existing classes. We introduced the Faceman and the Fated in this way.

Modern Skills can be obtained through Backgrounds. It’s been condensed into just two skills, Mechanics (which covers Engineering and Advanced Driving) and Science (which covers computing).

That gives us enough mechanics to play the game, but not quite enough for a good playtest document. I’ll be working on Backgrounds, at least 4 more themes, and Vehicles before my scheduled playtest at GenCon. Look for more posts on the subject soon.

In the mean time, I’d love some comments on what to do about the name. Modern Assembly doesn’t exactly sound like a guns vs. dragons type game. It sounds almost like a UN simulation.

The end game should help you run Modern Fantasy settings like Buffy or Blade, but also post apocalyptic scenarios like Reign of Fire.

I’m leaning towards “Dwarves with Shotguns”. What do you think?